other writers and imperial functionaries. They evidently
associated Christianity with the oriental superstitions, whether
propagated by individuals or embodied in a rite, which were in that day
traversing the empire, and which in the event acted so remarkable a part
in breaking up the national forms of worship, and so in preparing the
way for Christianity. This, then, is the broad view which the educated
heathen took of Christianity; and, if it had been very unlike those
rites and curious arts in external appearance, they would not have
confused it with them.

Changes in society are by a providential appointment commonly preceded
and facilitated by the setting in of a certain current in men's thoughts
and feelings in that direction toward which a change is to be made.
And, as lighter substances whirl about before the tempest and presage
it, so words and deeds, ominous but not effective of the coming
revolution, are circulated beforehand through the multitude or pass
across the field of events. This was specially the case with
Christianity, as became its high dignity; it came heralded and attended
by a crowd of shadows, shadows of itself, impotent and monstrous as
shadows are, but not at first sight distinguishable from it by common
spectators. Before the mission of the apostles a movement, of which
there had been earlier parallels, had begun in Egypt, Syria, and the
neighboring countries, tending to the propagation of new and peculiar
forms of worship throughout the empire. Prophecies were afloat that some
new order of things was coming in from the East, which increased the
existing unsettlement of the popular mind; pretenders made attempts to
satisfy its wants, and old traditions of the truth, embodied for ages in
local or in national religions, gave to these attempts a doctrinal and
ritual shape, which became an additional point of resemblance to that
truth which was soon visibly to appear.

The distinctive character of the rites in question lay in their
appealing to the gloomy rather than to the cheerful and hopeful
feelings, and in their influencing the mind through fear. The notions of
guilt and expiation, of evil and good to come, and of dealings with the
invisible world, were in some shape or other preeminent in them, and
formed a striking contrast to the classical polytheism, which was gay
and graceful, as was natural in a civilized age. The new rites, on the
other hand, were secret; their doctrine was mysterio